Contemporary Mind: Some Modern Answers

By J.W.N. Sullivan

“Contemporary Mind - Some Modern Answers” is a fantastic collection of essays by English science writer John W. Sullivan. They deal with a range of subjects, ranging from mysticism and immortality to the relationship between science and art. John William Navin Sullivan (1886 – 1937) was a literary journalist and popular science writer most famous for his study of Beethoven. He is also responsible for having written some of the earliest non-technical accounts of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, and he was acquainted with many important writers in London in the 1920s, including John Middleton Murry, Aldous Huxley, Wyndham Lewis, Aleister Crowley and T. S. Eliot. Other notable works by this author include “Aspects of Science” (1923), “Aspects of Science: Second Series” (1926), and An Outline of Modern Knowledge (1931). Contents include: “The Balanced Life”, “The Problem of Suffering”, “The Necessity of Mysticism”, “Human Immortality”, “A Dissertation on Beethoven”, “The Scientific Outlook”, “A Dissertation on Maxwell”, “New Principles”, “A Dissertation on Newton”, “Science and Art”, “Mathematics and Culture”, “Sir Josiah Stamp”, “Mr. Aldous Huxley”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jan 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781528784955

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE problems discussed in this book may justly be called fundamental problems. They are the questions that remain, as it were, behind all our specialised interests. Our general outlook on life is determined chiefly by our attitude towards these questions. They have probably been discussed ever since man found sufficient leisure to think about anything other than his bodily wants. They have assumed different forms at different times, however, and the relative gravity and acuteness of them has changed considerably.

The differences between the modem age and any preceding age, so far as they are essential, are due chiefly to science. This is obviously true, of course, so far as the mere mechanism of life is concerned, but it is also true that our general outlook on life has been largely influenced by science. It is not that science has originated new answers concerning the why, whence and whither of existence, but it has made certain answers much more plausible than others.

The theory, for instance, that all life is purposeless, the product of a blind, impersonal fate, was held by Democritus and was doubtless held before him. But, in the form in which it was preached by Democritus and popularized by Lucretius, it was more the expression of an emotion than a reasoned philosophy. To say that everything came about in a purposeless manner, when no description of the process could be given, was not particularly convincing. For the world, particularly the world of animate nature, appears to be full of instances of purpose and design. But modern science has made the general outlook of Democritus much more plausible. Darwin, in his theory of natural selection, attempted to give a mechanism whereby all the exquisite adaptations we meet with in animate nature could have come about accidentally. He stated that variations are constantly occurring in all living creatures, that some of these variations are inheritable, and that those that enable the creature to adapt itself more perfectly to its environment will tend to be preserved in the struggle for existence. In the form in which the theory was popularized by the materialists of the nineteenth century it was assumed that the variations occurred at random. That is to say, that although the variations doubtless occur in accordance with laws of nature of which we at present know practically nothing, we are not to suppose that they reveal any purpose, any upward and on tendency in nature. The march from the amœba to man has not been designed. So far as the nature of things is concerned, as it were, it might have been the other way round.

Thus we see, in this particular instance, that modern science has made an age-old philosophy much more plausible. It is now possible to believe that existence is purposeless in a way quite impossible to an intelligent mediaevalist, or even to a man of Paley’s time. The instances of design on which they relied have now been accounted for in terms of a purely mindless mechanism.

To say this is perhaps to go too far. The mechanism by which new adaptations are produced is not yet understood, and there are some biologists who doubt whether they can be accounted for by blind mechanical forces. They think that inherent tendencies and the like, processes not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry, may have to be assumed in order to explain the origin and development of living things. But even if such notions are introduced it is evident that the old conception of Design, and of a Great Designer, will have been profoundly modified. For the design is carried through with a wastefulness altogether beyond human standards. For every living creature that succeeds in getting a footing in life there are thousands or millions that perish. There is an enormous random scattering for every seed that comes to life. This does not remind us of intelligent human design. If a man, in order to shoot a hare, were to discharge thousands of guns on a great moor in all possible directions; if, in order to get into a locked-up room, he were to buy ten thousand casual keys, and try them all; if, in order to have a house, he were to build a town, and leave all the other houses to wind and weather—assuredly no one would call such proceedings purposeful, and still less would anyone conjecture behind these proceedings a higher wisdom, unrevealed reasons, and superior prudence.*

Nevertheless, the wastefulness of the process does not disprove the existence of design. We can only say that the design is carried out in a very singular manner, judged by human standards. It is an argument against the Great Designer of Christian theology, wholly benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent, but not, perhaps, against a Designer of limited power dealing with extremely intractable material. On the whole, we may conclude that the biological theory of evolution makes the old doctrine of a purposeless universe distinctly more plausible.

Another of the great fundamental problems, the problem of suffering, is a question concerning which science seems to have nothing to say. Such increased intensity and acuteness as the problem may have acquired may be referred to the greater sensibility, on the part of the mass of the people, that has come about in modern times, and this greater sensibility has only very indirectly been influenced by scientific advances. No problem in the history of mankind has proved more insoluble than the problem of evil.

The survival of bodily death is another of the age-old questions with which we are concerned, and to this question we may definitely say that science has made a contribution. But its contribution is ambiguous. On the one hand modern physiology has made the independent existence of the mind, apart from the body, distinctly less plausible than it was before. On the other hand psychical research, which may be classed as a very rudimentary and imperfect branch of science, has produced a certain amount of evidence for the independent existence of the mind. Evidence of this kind is entirely modern. In fact, the whole psychical research movement can be dated from 1847, when the Fox sisters started their rappings. These phenomena, if we are to believe the late confessions of the sisters themselves, were fraudulent, and the subsequent development of the movement has certainly been attended by an immense amount of fraud. It is difficult, however, to dismiss all the diverse phenomena lumped together under the name of spiritualism as fraudulent. But the best attested phenomena, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, etc., do not necessitate the hypothesis of a discarnate mind although, if we admit them, they certainly require us to oppose that there exist mental powers not taken into account by ordinary psychology. Even some of the material phenomena, such as levitation are difficult to explain away. In the best attested cases we can only maintain the purely natural explanation either by supposing that the medium was an almost unbelievably clever trickster, or else by supposing that the observers were almost unbelievably imbecile.

It is much easier to dismiss the evidence for discarnate minds, especially if we admit the existence of the extraordinary mental powers postulated by the phenomena of telepathy and clairvoyance. For it is then possible to construct hypotheses which will explain many, if not all, alleged spirit communications without invoking either discarnate minds or sheer fraud. It is possible, nevertheless, that there remains a modicum of phenomena which cannot be explained in this way. Dr. Broad, who has investigated these phenomena very carefully, does not believe that even these require us to assume discarnate minds and he presents us, as a minimum hypothesis, with his rather horrible theory of a psychic factor, something which is not itself a mind, but which can survive physical death and, in confunction with a living physical brain, form a temporary mind.

If the evidence of psychic research leaves survival doubtful, the evidence of physiology makes it still more doubtful. For we now realise how much closer even than has generally been assumed by common sense is the relation between mind and body. A man’s character, as well as his intellect, seems to be almost entirely at the mercy of his bodily functions. A benevolent saint can, it appears, be turned into a homicidal lunatic by a bodily operation. The man’s true character, which flourishes independently of his ductless glands, seems to be a myth. As the observed correlations between bodily changes and mental changes become more numerous, it becomes more difficult to believe in the existence of a mind independent of the body. Partial destruction of the body certainly seems to involve partial destruction of the mind. It is natural to conclude that the total destruction of the one involves the total destruction of the other. But it would be very rash to take this conclusion as proved. The established correlations between bodily states and mental states are still comparatively few in number. And even were the correlations made much more numerous it might still be possible to maintain that the mind is an independent entity using the body as its instrument. On the whole, however, the theory that the mind is wholly dependent on the body, and is destroyed with it, has been made somewhat more plausible by the advances in physiology.

Even if we believe that we live in a purposeless universe and that bodily death means total annihilation it is still true that happiness is a good thing and suffering a bad one. A man who believes that the whole human adventure is purposeless may still be ardently concerned with the welfare of the human race. He may be profoundly interested in the future and whole-souled in his endeavours to make that future better than the present. The fact that he believes the emergence of conscious thinking beings to be a meaningless episode between two eternities need not affect his practical activities or his motives for them. For many of our activities are entirely independent of our philosophy. They do not require to be rationalized; they are their own obvious justification. All the obvious cases of doing good to others fall into this class. It is only when we are not quite sure where the good lies that our philosophy has any bearings on the matter. Thus those who believe that the meaning of the present is to be found in the future, that we exist to make the world better for coming generations, are not disturbed by the theoretical purposelessness of the whole human adventure. The fact that science preaches the ultimate physical death of the universe does not alter their conviction that there ought to be as much happiness as possible in the meantime.

Nevertheless there are, and always have been, many people who have a strong desire to believe that the human adventure is not ultimately purposeless, however little influence this belief may have on their actions. They find it impossible to believe that the universe is so irrational an affair as it would appear to be on the purposeless theory. And some of them even claim to have an intuition that it is not so. These impulses have, of course, played a large part in framing religious systems and also many of the systems of philosophy. Such systems do not impose themselves; they do not command assent. There is no general agreement as to their validity. But these intuitions seem to have been shared by some of the greatest men that the race has produced, and it is possible to suppose, therefore, that they lie in the line of advance of the developing human consciousness. The most advanced forms of these intuitions are to be found in mysticism, and the mystical solution, when various solutions are investigated, seems to be the only really satisfactory alternative to the theory of a purposeless universe. It is from this point of view that mysticism is discussed in this book.

It is a commonplace to say that science is becoming more and more philosophical. This remark is somewhat misleading, for the scientific outlook has always, of course, presupposed a philosophy. But it is true that scientific men are becoming more conscious of the philosophy they assume. If we are to judge by the interviews contained in this book we see that the mathematical physicists, at any rate, are inclined to a form of philosophical idealism. They regard consciousness as fundamental; everything else is to be derived from it. Perhaps too much importance should not be attached to this fact. Scientific men are not usually profound students of philosophy, and it may be that they have accepted a philosophic outlook without being fully aware of what can be said for and against it. Still, the fact is significant, and suggests that a thorough investigation of the philosophic aspects of modern science is urgently required. In any case, it seems perfectly clear that a return to the naive materialism of the nineteenth century is impossible.

The contribution of modern scientific theory to the old problem of determinism versus freewill is more direct. Heisenberg’s principle of Indeterminacy states that sufficient knowledge for accurate prediction can never be obtained about the ultimate constituents of matter—electrons. In order to predict the future motion of an electron, for instance, we require to know both its present position and its present velocity. Our measurements of these quantities are attended by a certain necessary minimum margin of error. This is not due to any theoretically remediable defects in our measuring apparatus, but is due to the fact that a certain necessary minimum interchange of energy (a quantum) is involved in our observation of the electron, and this interchange of energy is sufficient to disturb the electron in an unpredictable way. It is suggested, in particular by Professor Eddington, that since the notion of determinism, as applied to the fundamental processes of nature, is unverifiable and useless, it should be dropped. The apparently determined behaviour of the bodies ordinarily dealt with in scientific practice and daily experience is a purely statistical result. It is an average behaviour, due to the fact that the individual notions of the electrons constituting the body cancel out, as it were. And Professor Eddington suggests that this principle of indeterminacy is of great importance for the problem of freewill, if only for the reason that we are not likely to suppose that the mind is more mechanistic than an electron. It is indeed probable that the prejudice in favour of mental determinism, so largely encouraged by the apparently successful adoption of